U.S. Judge Denies Apple's Request to Ban Samsung Galaxy Sales

A crucial victory has been garnered for Samsung against Apple's patent lawsuits. In a late Friday ruling, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction against Samsung selling Galaxy phones and tablets in the United States. Although there are several ongoing lawsuits from Apple against Samsung world-wide, this U.S. lawsuit was filed by Apple in April. On Friday, when Judge Koh rejected Apple's attempts to block Samsung sales of 3 mobile phones and the Galaxy Tab 10.1, she made the following statement, "It is not clear that an injunction on Samsung's accused devices would prevent Apple from being irreparably harmed." (That seems like a 'bass-ackwards' way of saying that, doesn't it?)

Of course Samsung had happy words regarding the ruling. Samsung spokesman Jason Kim said in an email, "This ruling confirms our long-held view that Apple's arguments lack merit." It's worth noting that Apple could still win in the over-all lawsuit. This just stops the preliminary injunction to halt sales of Samsung devices, which is well-timed for Samsung before the crucial holiday season. Here's a quote from the Reuters article with some more details,

Koh added that Apple would likely prove Samsung infringed one of its tablet patents. However, Apple had not shown that it was likely to overcome Samsung's challenges to the patent's validity, Koh wrote.

Apple must demonstrate both infringement and validity to succeed in its lawsuit.

Still, it looks like that Apple will likely have an up-hill battle from now on, at least in the courtroom. As far as the tablet market is concerned, even with the Galaxy Tab 10.1, the strongly competitive Amazon Kindle Fire, and a host of other powerful alternatives coming soon like the Transformer Prime, more than likely, Apple will still dominate. It will likely be their market throughout 2012, but that also means it will be their market-share that Android will be eating away at into the future...